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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24340360">our grassbrains singing toward the blade</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/vegarin/pseuds/vegarin'>vegarin</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Daredevil (TV), The Defenders (Marvel TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, Memory Loss</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-05-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 07:22:28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>6,323</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24340360</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/vegarin/pseuds/vegarin</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>Mike didn't have to be able to see to feel the man's eyes on him, the palpable weight of his regard. It was hard not to wonder what Mike would be seeing, if he could. </em>
</p><p> <em>Who the man was seeing that Mike couldn't.</em></p><p>Set after The Defenders. Not canon-compliant for D3/The Punisher. Peripherally inspired by Born Again.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Frank Castle/Matt Murdock</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>147</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>our grassbrains singing toward the blade</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p>When the man walked through the door, Mike was getting ready to close the kitchen. It was well past midnight, and the diner was already deserted, empty even of the usual late night regulars, truck drivers and restless souls. Only the man's quiet, almost soundless, steps interrupted a crooning voice from the radio singing of a lost love.</p><p>Hazel was back in the storage room, grabbing a brief shut-eye. She had late night shifts, three kids with a deadbeat husband, and never enough sleep. Instead of waking her just to greet one customer, Mike wiped his hands on the apron around his waist, rounded the corner, and stood behind the counter. ''Coffee?'' he asked in the general direction of where the man's footsteps had come from.</p><p>There was a grunt that Mike took as assent, and then the sound of a stool dragging on the linoleum floor somewhere left of the diner. He reached for the coffee pot, still warm on the boiler, and took an empty mug out of the usual shelf. When the cup felt close to full, he picked up the mug and turned left, counting his steps and one hand tracing over the familiar peeling paint of the wall.</p><p>He pushed the mug across the counter toward where the grunt had come from. ''Something to eat?'' he asked.</p><p>This time, there wasn't even a grunt in lieu of an answer. The radio still crackled with a song promising to return to its only true love: <em>And the rocks may melt and the seas may burn, if I should not return</em>. There was a faint smell of smoke and rain, a wisp of cold air the man had carried in with him from outside.</p><p>The song went on for some time—<em>If I had a friend, all on this earth, you've been a friend to me—</em>but there was still no answer from the man. Mike turned around.</p><p>A hand grabbed his wrist, stilling him in his tracks.</p><p>''The <em>fuck</em> are you doing here?'' the man asked, voice low and gravelly—and wholly unfamiliar.</p><p>The hand demanded an immediate answer. Mike grasped for it and settled on, ''I work here, in the kitchen.'' Apparently it was a wrong answer, because the grip tightened. ''I'm Mike,'' he added, as if that would help.</p><p>''Mike,'' the man repeated slowly, like a pronouncement, testing its sound and finding it lacking. ''How long have you been working here, <em>Mike</em>?''</p><p>"As long as I can remember." It was true enough, for all he knew. The fact that the memory only extended to a few months ago seemed inconsequential.</p><p>That was also a wrong answer. The man moved; Mike felt the air shift, and something shattered behind him. <em>The coffee mug</em>, Mike thought almost absently, feeling drops of hot coffee splash across his cheek.</p><p>He didn't move. His wrist was still in the man's other hand, and the grip was unyielding, implacable. With a little more pressure, the man could—and maybe <em>would</em>, Mike thought, oddly calm—break his wrist.</p><p>''Mike?'' Hazel's voice, still thick with sleep, cut through the tableau. ''What's the ma—<em>oh no</em>. What happened?''</p><p>The air shifted again: the man had let him go. Mike staggered on his feet, suddenly bereft of the vice-like anchor that had him rooted in place.</p><p>''Careful,'' said Hazel, who came up to his side and put a hand on his arm. She led him around the broken tea mug that he could feel scattered at his feet.</p><p>''My fault,'' he said to Hazel, when she helped him to a chair. ''My hand slipped.''</p><p>''No,'' the man said, sudden and rough. ''It was mine.''</p><p>Mike turned to the voice. He didn't have to be able to see to feel the man's eyes on him, the palpable weight of his regard. It was hard not to wonder what Mike would be seeing, if he could.</p><p>Who the man was seeing that Mike couldn't.</p><p>''Don't ever go takin' on blame for someone else's doing, you hear me?'' the man said, abrupt—and furious, for some reason that Mike could not even begin to fathom. The man placed something on the bar before he turned and walked away.</p><p>Just as soon as the diner door shut behind him, Hazel told Mike, voice hushed, ''That man just left a couple of hundred dollar bills.''</p><p>Mike could still feel the hand imprinted around his wrist. The weight of it.</p><p>The implausible, impossible, familiarity of it.</p><p>''Oh hon,'' said Hazel, putting a gentle hand on his face, ''what happened?''</p><p>
  <em>The fuck are you doing here?</em>
</p><p>Mike didn't have an answer to either.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>
  <em>Matthew.</em>
</p><p>A voice he couldn't place woke him up from a dream he couldn't remember.</p><p>During the day, sleep was elusive at best. Even with the blinds drawn, the sun was still out, and Mike still felt its mark on his skin, resting just beyond his eyelids.</p><p>In the dream, somewhere beyond the haunting voice, there may have been an answer.</p><p>But for the moment, he couldn't bear to return to that blackness, in that total absence of all scents and sounds. Instead, he picked up a Braille book that Sister Maggie had left with him weeks ago—<em>the Testament of Job</em>—and started it again from the beginning.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>The man returned next night.</p><p>It was a busier night. Evening shifts had just ended, and with night shifts just about to start, the diner was full with people trying to grab quick meals in between and get on with their lives.</p><p>''We had three break-ins just last month,'' said Sam, a night guard at the building across the street. ''One time, one of the staff almost got pummeled to death. It's gettin' rough out there.''</p><p>''It sure is.'' Hazel, sympathetic, filled his mug with more coffee and listened to his flight, as she'd done every night. "It ain't ever gonna get better now, is it?"</p><p>Mike placed a grilled cheese on the bar and tapped on the bell. Hazel picked it up in between getting more coffee for Lorenzo, a truck driver who lived down the street and insisted on subsisting on caffeine alone when he wasn't eating here, and a slice of pie for Emilia, who just finished her shift at the grocery around the corner and was about to start her night class.</p><p>The diner was an assortment of broken things and people. Hazel, ever kind-hearted, seemingly collected every one of them, and Mike listened to all the stories that filled the space as he worked. He made two dinner specials and Denver sandwich with fries and plated everything carefully. He was about to start on the third special when Hazel rushed into the kitchen.</p><p>"That man from last night," Hazel whispered, urgent and low. ''He's back.''</p><p>"Is he—" Mike stopped, not sure how to start or finish the question. Or what he even wanted to ask in the first place. He chose to go with, "Is he giving you any trouble?''</p><p>''No, just sat all the way in the back and asked for coffee.''</p><p>Mike nodded. ''Okay, maybe keep an eye on him? And ask Sam to stick around for a bit. Just in case.''</p><p>''That's a good idea,'' said Hazel. ''You gonna be okay in here?''</p><p>''I'll be fine,'' he reassured her, not quite meaning it, "don't worry."</p><p>He sent her back out with a quick kiss on her cheek. He went back to the grill and focused on not burning the burgers, the heat he felt on his fingertips and the sizzle in the air. There was a certain, quiet rhythm he found in the flow of the kitchen, in the predictable space between the fridge and the grill, between the sinks and the doorway to the dining room, even when he felt nowhere close to calm.</p><p>She came back after two cheeseburgers and one more Denver sandwich.</p><p>''He asked for some pie,'' she said, sounding befuddled. "And when I went back to check on him, he was already gone.''</p><p>Somehow, this didn't surprise him.</p><p>''Figure maybe he just doesn't like rhubarb," Hazel wondered aloud. "Maybe the man prefers blueberries.''</p><p>Mike found it difficult not to smile just then. ''Hazel, somehow I don't think we'll be finding out his taste in pies any time soon.''</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>He was wrong. The man returned the next night.</p><p>And then almost every night after that. He asked for coffee and a slice of pie every time, Hazel told Mike. Sometimes he left before he finished the pie; sometimes he didn't.</p><p>''The man sure loves his pie,'' Hazel said, with something like awe. ''Everything but the rhubarb.''</p><p>The time he came in varied, too. Sometimes he came just before midnight. Sometimes well after that. And always arrived, according to Hazel, in some states of disarray.</p><p>''Feels like I know him from someplace. Can't put my finger on where, though,'' Hazel said, a frown in her voice.</p><p>One of the quieter nights, quiet enough for Mike to have a chance to sit at a corner of the counter and pick up his book, the man came in again. Mike knew who it was almost instantly, felt the man's very presence in the air as if it was a tangible thing, meant to be grasped and held.</p><p>The diner was otherwise empty. Instead of getting Hazel from the storage, Mike took a chance; he put down the book and asked, ''Coffee?''</p><p>A terse answer came a few seconds later: "Yes.'' The voice seemed hoarse, as if from disuse.</p><p>When the man sat down across from him, Mike pulled out a mug and filled it to the brim. When he turned around, he found the man leafing through Mike's book.</p><p>"Fitting," the man said, voice steeped in dry amusement, and returned the book to Mike.</p><p>Mike rested his fingers over the book's cover and wondered, half in abstraction, why a story about a man who had lost his faith and thought he could go no further, even at the face of God's apparent and senseless wrath, would be deemed fitting. He didn't dare to guess.</p><p>He thought, instead, of the question he had kept in his heart. ''Did you know me, before?''</p><p>There was a drawn out silence, seemingly stretching toward eternity.</p><p>''No,'' the man said, finally. ''Never really did.''</p><p>Mike wasn't sure which was more of a surprise: the fact that the man had decided to answer or the answer itself. "Then, you're coming back here every night—for what?"</p><p>There was no immediate answer, and Mike thought perhaps there wouldn't be one, having exceeded some indefinite word limit seemingly allocated for each night. Mike sat back and reached for his book again.</p><p>Only then, the man said, ''For the best goddamned pie in the whole city, what else?''</p><p>He went on to sip his coffee, in a clear—almost petulant—emphasis of his point.</p><p>"Right, of course," said Mike. He couldn't suppress a small, sudden smile from spreading across his face, even as he shook his head a little at absurdity of the answer—at all of it. "The pies. Everything but the rhubarb."</p><p>The feel of the man's eyes on him was sudden and incisive, and at the face of it, Mike felt his smile trailing, slowly, to an uncertain stop.</p><p>Before he could think of anything to say, the man was already on his feet. In another second, he was gone, leaving behind a few crumbled bills and more questions that Mike could barely hold onto.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p><em>Matthew</em>.</p><p>A haunting voice that he couldn't place woke him up from a dream he couldn't remember.</p><p>Somewhere behind the door that was his dream, there may have been an answer. Beyond that dark and inky surface of the unknowable. Beyond the blackness, in that absence of sound and smell. All of it pointing to one seemingly true fact.</p><p>There was nothing left for him anymore, in that memory. In that black past.</p><p>But there it remained, behind the closed door.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>On the radio, someone was talking of the fire and brimstone raining down on Hell's Kitchen, as it had been for days and weeks and months, before Hazel finally changed the station to golden oldies. Soon, one by one, the regulars had left, and all else was quiet except for Hazel bustling in the kitchen next to him and humming tunes he didn't know.</p><p>''Oh shoot,'' said Hazel. ''I think we actually ran out of brown sugar. You mind mindin' store for a while?''</p><p>''Go,'' said Mike. ''I'll take over.''</p><p>He washed the pans and listened to the rain spattering against the glass panes. It was rhythmic, even consoling, and he was absorbed enough in its faint echoes that he almost missed the creaking of the backdoor.</p><p>"That was quick—" he stopped, startled into stillness. The steps coming from the door were heavy, not at all like Hazel's, and he smelled a sharp tang of copper—<em>blood</em>—in the air.</p><p>Mike unthinkingly reached out, and found the man, their resident pie-loving regular, swaying dangerously on his feet near the doorway. The man smelled like miles of the bad roads in this city. He smelled of sulfur and gunpowder saturated with blood.</p><p>Mike struggled to sit him down on a stool and winced at the man's low hisses of pain. ''What happened?'' Mike asked, tracing up the man's arm and finding a gorging wound just below the neck. He pressed a clean dishcloth over the cut with one hand and reached for the phone with the other.</p><p>The man's hand was on his arm, with surprising amount of force behind it. "No cops." When Mike opened his mouth to correct him, the man added, "No hospital, either."</p><p>It was surprisingly easy to make a decision. Mike retrieved their only—likely long expired—first aid kit from the bathroom and started unfolding its content.</p><p>"You're losing too much blood," said Mike, confident for some reason he couldn't start to articulate. A knife wound, he thought, not a gunshot. May need to be cauterized, maybe not. The man felt intact otherwise. "We need to stop the bleeding first."</p><p>"And you know how, I take it," the man said, somehow not as skeptical as the situation should've warranted.</p><p>"I think we're about to find out,'' said Mike, rather optimistically.</p><p>The man snorted, almost sounding amused. "Reassuring."</p><p>Mike carefully threaded a needle. His hands, somehow, knew what they needed to do. "For what it's worth, I don't think I was born blind."</p><p>The man was quiet for a long while, only taking an occasional sharp breath when the needle hit its mark.</p><p>"What <em>do </em>you remember," the man asked, pain slurring the edges of his voice and halting at the last word, as if he hadn't meant to ask all along. As if, Mike thought, he hadn't meant to admit that he'd been listening in on the diner regulars and collecting information about the new short order cook all this time. Mike knew what he would've heard: a stray that Hazel had picked up at the behest of the nearby church's orphanage a few months ago. No family, no memory, blind as a bat but made a mean cheeseburger and even better pancakes.</p><p>"I remember shape of things," Mike said, hoping that perhaps talking a little would help distract the man from the pain. "What it felt like, seeing them."</p><p>He'd never know whether if any of it were from memory or from longing. But he still wanted to believe that he could know the shape of things, all that was carefully withheld from his reach, if only he'd patiently sharpen down a <em>sense</em> of things into a precise and measured construction—shape them into things that could be held and remembered.</p><p>"Do you have any memory you don't think you could hold onto?" Mike asked. A question, he thought, he would like to ask himself if he could.</p><p>The man didn't answer, which Mike took as a yes. "If you could forget, would you?" he asked.</p><p>"Never," the man said.</p><p>Even without that single inexorable word, the answer was already written all over the rigid tension of the man's shoulders, in that seemingly unfaltering stillness. Nothing could weather that rock, Mike thought with an odd certainty, and nothing would induce him to forget.</p><p>Neither, it seemed, was true for Mike.</p><p>When the stitches underneath his fingers felt complete and unbroken, Mike carefully covered them with gauze. When Mike started to fumble with bandages, the man said, "I've got it," and took them over from his hands.</p><p>"All right," Mike said, mildly. Even though the man's breathing felt still uneven, movements jerky and restrained, every gesture seemed to radiate the desire not to be helped any further.</p><p>Ascertaining what happened to the man or asking why he chose to come here for help seemed entirely pointless. "Do you need a place to lay low?" Mike asked instead, and felt the man's surprise, suppressed as it was. "I live upstairs here if you need a place to stay," he added.</p><p>"Why," the man started, voice flat, "would you willingly offer up something like that?"</p><p>He sounded genuinely, and not just a little, furious at Mike—again, Mike thought, for some reason that he couldn't even begin to unravel. "You're in some trouble," Mike said. "And you don't seem like a bad person."</p><p>"That," the man said, with a short, humorless laugh, "is where you've always been wrong."</p><p>Mike wondered, almost absently, if the gift of sight would have allowed him to take an impression of the man in front of him—would've allowed him to read the history in the outline of the broad shoulders and know what it was that he needed to say.</p><p>There was no way to know. "All right," Mike said again, mostly to himself, and turned back to the clean the floor before Hazel returned. For a long moment, he only heard the sound of the man piecing himself back together, and the sound of his own hands scrubbing the linoleum.</p><p>By the time Mike finished washing the floor, the man was gone.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>Mike didn't think the man would come back, but he did a few days later, without any sign of his injuries.</p><p>And then the next night, and then again after that.</p><p>For most nights he sat at his usual spot, by the far corner table, seemingly content being left alone with his pie and coffee. When Mike was on his break and reading his book at the counter, the man would sit across from him and stay until closing. For most nights there they sat, Mike with his book, and the man with his pie, in their oddly companionable silence.</p><p>Sometimes Mike could hear the man hum a little under his breath. Sometimes the man would have a little knife out, working on whittling what seemed to be a small piece of wood.</p><p>"Oh, is that a chess piece?" Hazel asked over the man's shoulder once, friendly and amiable, between pouring more coffee for Lorenzo and chatting up with Emilia over some TV show.</p><p>"Someone I knew," the man said.</p><p>"A friend?" Hazel prodded.</p><p>"Could've been," he answered, terse and impassive, and even Hazel, who was already treating the man just like another odd fixture of the diner she'd managed to collect, knew not to ask more.</p><p>It took the man a few nights, it seemed, to complete his little project. Mike realized that one night, when he found a small wooden figurine sitting on top of his book.</p><p><em>Bat</em>? Mike wondered, running his fingers over the piece.</p><p>"It looks like a tiny monster to me," said Hazel, once she saw it. "With cute little horns."</p><p>For no particular reason, Mike slipped it into his shirt pocket and kept it there.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>That night, he didn't dream.</p><p>A minor miracle.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>"The word out there is," Sam said, devouring his second cordon bleu for the night, "Kingpin's taken over the entire operation on that side, too."</p><p>"You'd best avoid that side of the city, if you could help it." Hazel, refilling his coffee, let out a sigh loud enough to be heard in the kitchen. "Soon enough it won't be safe to walk anywhere in this city."</p><p>The radio was once again droning of hellfire and brimstone. The last call was already made and the night was all but over, so Mike's attention was already on the book Hazel had picked up for him from the city library when he caught the tail end of Hazel's cheerful, "We're closed!"</p><p>"No, you're not," a man said.</p><p>Hazel's hushed "<em>Joey</em>," in the tone of voice he didn't ever recall hearing from her sent Mike to his feet. By the time he stumbled out into the dining room, he'd already heard Sam's angry shouts, chairs scrapping against the floor, and harsh, rancorous laughter that made his heart pace. He could also smell Hazel's husband, along with several of his friends who all seemed to be equally drunk.</p><p>"<em>Stop</em>," Mike said, just loud enough to cut through the moment. "All of you need to stop and leave, right now."</p><p>A man, who had to be Joey, staggered up to him and sneered into his face. "Oh, yeah? Who's gonna make us? You?"</p><p>Mike thought, rather fleetingly, <em>what an asinine line,</em> before he felt a blow to his face. The pain began to register seconds later, when he was already down on one knee and another kick to his face had him swallowing blood. He could hear Sam, clumsily reaching for the gun belt at his side, but then he too was swept in the sound of struggles, with Joey's friends rushing at him together.</p><p>Joey pulled Mike up by his neck and jeered. "Are <em>you</em> the blind cripple my wife's been keepin' around?"</p><p>Joey swung again. The air charged.</p><p>But the hit never came.</p><p>Instead, Joey grunted once, hard, and crumbled.</p><p>The diner was silent, as if the air had been sucked out of the place and everyone had stopped breathing.</p><p>"Leave," a voice said.</p><p>Mike, collapsed on the floor, needed a moment to realize what everyone else already knew: their pie-loving regular was standing over Joey. Mike hadn't heard him come in. No one seemed to have. But there he seemed to be, Mike felt, larger than life and utterly immovable.</p><p>And his single word was somehow, improbably, sufficient. Mike could hear Joey's friends hastily scrambling to their feet, trying to drag Joey between them.</p><p>"Well, shit," Sam said, into the ensuing silence after all the men had swept out the diner like they were lit on fire.</p><p>Hazel, still shaken, turned to their rescuer, a heart-felt thank you already on her lips. The man waved her aside and whirled around on Mike instead.</p><p>"You." He yanked Mike up to his feet and jabbed a sharp finger into his chest. "What in the <em>hell</em> are you trying to—"</p><p>The man stopped suddenly, like whatever he saw in Mike's face seemed to have dried up the words he had left to say.</p><p>"Mike," Hazel said, alarmed. Mike reached up and felt the blood trickling down from the cut on his face.</p><p>"I'm all right," he tried to say, but he knew he wasn't about to convince anyone. Hazel was already at his side, helping him tilt his face upward. Sam hastily came over with a marginally clean dishcloth and a pack of ice cubes.</p><p>By the time Hazel and Sam managed to stop the bleeding, the man was gone.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>"I'll take the kids and go stay with my sister for a little while," Hazel told them. "Don't you worry, hon. I don't plan to be stupid."</p><p>"What good would that do? It's not like he doesn't know where you work," Emilia said. "You've got to go to the police."</p><p>"That's right," Lorenzo agreed. "Hazel, tell them Joey's a danger to you and the kids. That man can't keep doing this to you."</p><p>"But Joey works for that construction company, don't he?" asked Sam. "They're all on Kingpin's payroll. Who'd you trust in the police now? They aren't gonna lift a finger against one of their own."</p><p>Hazel didn't go to the police. For the rest of the week, she jumped whenever the diner door opened to admit customers, new and regulars alike.</p><p>Mike wanted—to do <em>something</em>. <em>Anything</em>. To remove that fear away for her.</p><p>But ever stronger than that want, sharper than that desperate need, was that all-consuming, searing knowledge in his heart somewhere that he <em>could not</em>.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>The man returned a week later.</p><p>"It may not be safe for you here," he said just as Mike opened the door to his room. "That husband should no longer pose a threat, but his friends worked for one of Fisk's men."</p><p>Slowly, Mike walked in and closed the door behind his back. His double shift had left his eyes gritty and his head heavy, but some of the words had still managed to land. "Explain to me what you mean by—<em>no longer pose a threat</em>."</p><p>"Of course," the man said, with that dark, unhappy laugh that Mike was almost becoming familiar with, "<em>that's </em>the first thing you'd pick up on."</p><p>"Joey hasn't shown up here since." For which Mike was deeply grateful. He really was. And yet. "What did you do? You can't just—you can't just <em>kill a person</em>."</p><p>"That's also where you're wrong. Every. Fucking. Time. See Exhibit A, counselor, for <em>Wilson</em> <em>Fisk</em>."</p><p>Mike only barely stopped himself from running a hand down the tender side of his face. "Wilson Fisk?" he asked, absently.</p><p>Before Mike could gather a single breath, the man crossed the distance between them in two wide strides and slammed Mike against the door. "You're telling me you <em>really</em> don't—"</p><p>The last word, choked off, still remained in the air, as if the man had screamed it for the world to hear:</p><p><em>Remember</em>.</p><p>"No," Mike said, low and cutting. "I <em>don't</em>."</p><p>For a moment, neither spoke. The man's hand on his shoulder still had Mike pinned on the spot, and he seemed to be suppressing an intense urge to shake Mike until something permanently gave. As it was, Mike thought that might still be in the card when the man took a sudden, sharp breath and reached around Mike to tap the light switch.</p><p>The single bulb of light above their heads, rarely used, seemed to flicker on after some struggle. It took just about as long for Mike to realize that the man could now see his face, battered and mottled as it was.</p><p>"It doesn't hurt," Mike offered, somewhat unnecessarily, into the man's expressive silence.</p><p>"Of course not," the man said. "Nothing ever does, does it." There was that cold-edged rage again, teeming just under the surface. Fingers hovered over Mike's face and stopped what felt like only inches away before withdrawing. "Should've killed him," he said, voice precariously tight, "just for this."</p><p>The tension in Mike's body dissipated. He hadn't killed Joey, then. Mike didn't know why it mattered. Only that it did.</p><p>And also—</p><p>"Why do you care?" Mike asked. It was suddenly very important that he knew why.</p><p>"I don't," said the man, flatly. Stubbornly.</p><p>It was such a transparent lie—one that seemed to, paradoxically, sharpen the ever-flickering impression of this man who had somehow coalesced into an improbably reassuring and disquieting shadow in Mike's life. An impression, Mike thought, that could be, maybe in time, whittled and sharpened into a shape that he could hold fast.</p><p>Mike held out his palm until he felt the rough stubble on the man's face, until he could trace his fingers along the coarse, weathered skin stretched thin over the sharp, angled bones, every inch implausibly familiar.</p><p>He wondered if this was what it meant, to see. To be <em>seen</em>.</p><p>The man jerked away from the touch, like he was suddenly awake. "No," he said.</p><p>Mike pulled back and swallowed, feeling like he'd been shanked in the chest and wondered how he could know what that felt like.</p><p>"I—" he started, but had to stop when words didn't want to form.</p><p>The man held his silence, rigid like granite, and once again unknowable and carefully out of reach. Mike thought, for a moment, that he could understand the man's laugh, one that only seemed to hurt.</p><p>He shouldn't—couldn't—stay. "I'm just—I'll," Mike said, twisting away and grappling for the doorknob, the desire to leave his own room becoming urgent and intolerable. But before he could, a hand grabbed his shoulder and whirled him back around.</p><p>Mike staggered against the door, trapped by the man's arms planted at his sides.</p><p>"<em>Fuck</em>," the man said, low and heated and absolutely unreadable otherwise. "Of all the fucked up ideas in this fucking world, this fucking takes the cake."</p><p>But the man held still and didn't move away, and neither did Mike.</p><p>"All right, then," said Mike, after a moment, and kissed him.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>"Why not rhubarb?" Mike asked.</p><p>The man's chest felt like a fine mesh of cracks and scars under his fingertips. His own wasn't too different, an errand thought that Mike carefully brushed aside.</p><p>He didn't think the man would answer. Statistically, Mike thought, there was about half a chance, if that. But the answer came just as Mike was convinced he'd already fallen asleep.</p><p>"My wife." The man let out a breath that was calm and composed, which was how Mike knew he felt neither. "It was her favorite."</p><p>The meaning behind the past tense was palpable. Mike didn't try to say he was sorry. There was a kind of loss that left a trace more searing than the ones already on his chest, the kind that would never mend. Certainly not by a few mere words from someone who was more of a stranger to him than not.</p><p>The man was silent again for a long time.</p><p>"You're happy." The man said it like it was a fact, but it felt more like a question. "With this life. With people here."</p><p>It was an odd question still. Mike wouldn't have thought there was anyone left in this whole city whose happiness this man had particularly cared for. But—</p><p>The raindrops falling on rooftops. Low, familiar chatters from the diner. Incessant creaking of the old mattress with several springs loose. The smell of grease floating up from the kitchen downstairs. All of them felt like home.</p><p>"Yes," said Mike, offering honesty, in return.</p><p>Mike wasn't sure if the man had heard his answer, but it didn't seem to matter.</p><p>"I wish I could say <em>this</em> was the worst thing I've done," the man said, grinding his fists against his eyes. "But it's not. Far from it."</p><p>He laughed again, like something was gnawing at his heart.</p><p>Mike kissed him again, just to muffle the sound so bright in its despair that began to feel like a gaping wound in his chest.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>
  <em>Matthew.</em>
</p><p>He woke up in an empty bed, from a dream of a woman with a long dark hair and even darker eyes.</p><p><em>No</em>, he thought, digging the heels of his palms into his eyes.</p><p>No.</p><p>Even tattered and unhinged, the door held.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>He'd known this from the moment of waking alone in an empty bed, but:</p><p>The man didn't come back to the diner next night.</p><p>Or nights after.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>"Apparently Kingpin took more of them down," said Sam. "Mowing down any dissenters like some grass."</p><p>"No one's seen the Punisher for weeks," said Emilia. "And they said he was the only one still left standing."</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>The radio no longer droned on about the fire and brimstone raining down on Hell's Kitchen. It was already everywhere, and everyone knew it.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>
  <em>Wake up, Matthew.</em>
</p><p>He woke up in an empty bed from a dream of a woman with a long dark hair and even darker eyes that he couldn't remember.</p><p>He didn't try to sleep again.</p><p>Instead, he ran his fingers over the little figurine of a horned monster and thought how easy it was, how simple, to be made to feel nothing.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>The door to his room was halfway open. The smell hit him first, that sharp tang of copper he could now recognize anywhere.</p><p>And then the voice that he'd thought he would never hear again:</p><p>"Fisk knows."</p><p>For one second, Mike stood rooted at the doorway. In another, he was on his knees, grasping for the familiar shape leaning heavily against the bedframe.</p><p>"You're hurt," Mike said, unthinkingly. His hands that had touched the man's arms came away slick with blood.</p><p>The man shook off Mike's hands and reached for something on the floor instead. There was a metallic click. A rifle. Magazines. More clicks came, one after another, as the man placed more of them on the floor.</p><p>"I thought it'd be better—kind, to leave you to this," the man said, between slow gasps for air. "You seemed—happy enough here. Happy as you'd ever be, anyhow." He laughed his short, unhappy laugh again. ''But one of them did recognize me. And Fisk never really believed you were dead in the first place. Turns out the fucker really <em>was</em> the smartest of us all along."</p><p>A wet, harsh cough from the man propelled Mike into action. "Come on," Mike said, clutching the blood-soaked shirt under the man's metal armor. "Let's just—get up. Just get up and move. We need to get you to—to a doctor."</p><p>"They're coming," the man continued on as if Mike hadn't spoken. "I can buy you some time. That's about all I've got."</p><p>The feverish words, what the man had meant, didn't register for a moment. "No," said Mike, when they finally did. He tightened his grips instead. "That's not—I <em>won't</em> leave you here."</p><p>In a single move, the man easily wrenched free from Mike's hands and grabbed Mike by his shirtfront instead. "For once in your fucking life, run <em>the fuck away </em>from death. Just <em>once</em>."</p><p>"No," Mike said again. The man's armor, slick with wet blood, slipped through his fingertips, and he desperately groped for purchase. "We just need to get you—out of here. To somewhere safe. Just, just get up and move. <em>Please</em>."</p><p>The man held still, and then began to unwind Mike's fingers from his grip, one by one. "That waitress. The people here. You gonna let them all die?"</p><p>Mike froze.</p><p>"Go," the man said, almost gently. "Leave. Now. Get them out."</p><p>The man's chest heaved, falling fast and silent. His breaths were thready and shallow. Mike felt every blunt edge of those sounds, felt every one of them stab into his chest, even as he thought, <em>Hazel</em>. <em>Sam</em>. They needed. <em>He</em> needed—</p><p>But, there had been questions.</p><p>There always had been, since the moment when the man had walked through the door.</p><p>''Who are you?'' Mike asked.</p><p>A question, he thought, that should have been spoken out loud a long before this moment. But here they were, now.</p><p>There was a long silence before the man breathed a word: ''Frank."</p><p>The name didn't register, not in the way that the weight of his presence did from the moment they had met.</p><p>He thought to himself, <em>Frank</em>.</p><p>''What was I to you, Frank?''</p><p>''A nuisance," he said, with a half smile, almost as if he'd been waiting to say it all along.</p><p>Mike considered the word, flipped it around its corners. A nuisance. A nuisance the man had risked his life for, for at least twice now. Or perhaps more, before.</p><p>Perhaps a more important question, then. ''What were you to me?'' he asked.</p><p>There was a laugh again—bitter and vicious, meant to twist somewhere inside himself. "One of your many lost causes.''</p><p>But it was not possible, Mike thought, for this man to have ever been one of many <em>anything</em>. He was singular. In and of himself.</p><p>Mike lifted his hand and touched the face in front of him. Traced its outlines, its rough, weathered skin stretched thin against his bones that still seemed implausibly familiar.</p><p>The man grasped Mike's hand, holding it tight over his chest.</p><p>"The world outside is on fire. You realize that, Red?"</p><p><em>Red</em>.</p><p>Senses and thoughts recede.</p><p>"Fisk—he's burning it all down, burning down this city. Your fucking city."</p><p><em>I lost—I've done—I ruined everything I've loved, everything I'd worked for</em>. <em>There is nothing left of me in that life.</em></p><p>''Wake <em>up</em>. Fucking <em>remember</em>.''</p><p><em>Frank</em>, he thinks.</p><p>One night in an empty graveyard, bathed in sweat and blood, there has been a story from a man who had lost everything he's ever loved and yet somehow still held on. And still held fast.</p><p>Every syllable still echoes in his ears, etched and engraved behind his eyelids.</p><p>"Penny and dime," Matt murmurs.</p><p>Frank inhales sharply.</p><p>"One batch," Matt says, running a numb hand down his face. "Two batch."</p><p>"Penny and dime," finishes Frank. He coughs a half-aborted laugh. "Took you long enough."</p><p><em>Elektra</em>, Matt thinks. Foggy. Karen.</p><p>The door crumbles. Like it's never been there in the first place.</p><p>His city, glowing and vibrant, hums at Matt.</p><p>He can hear the space around him, the shape of things, holding them together, holding him. He can hear its sounds, its voice, clinging to him, receding and submerging at will.</p><p>And he can hear them coming.</p><p>"What now," says Frank.</p><p>The question ricochets along the pounding steps of Fisk's men, the sound of their hammering hearts, echoing and closing in.</p><p>Matt can feel Frank's stuttery heart above it all, everything that it holds underneath, frail and pliable and paper-thin. But still there. Still holding.</p><p>And somehow, he knows the answer now.</p><p>"Now," Matt says, "we take them down."</p><p>Frank, with Matt's hand grasped over his beating heart, laughs again. He still holds fast. Holds still. "All right, then. Let's do it."</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p>
<hr/><p>
  <strong>END</strong>
</p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>This was yet another long-standing WIP that I didn't think would see the light of day, until 2020 decided to be, well, <em>2020</em>. I started working on it after The Defenders, mostly based on the Born Again speculations, but by the time Season Three and The Punisher came along, it no longer seemed to fit. </p><p>I thought it still might be worth sharing, after all this time. Thanks for reading!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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